Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis Quotes

What you have written after analyzing everything connected with my achievements and fame is altogether correct.

What at first strongly attracted my admiration was that the Professor‘s work was not imitative….The experience of India will serve as a guidance and as an example worthy of imitating.

The transformation of the advanced countries to their present stage has been brought about by the acceptance of a scientific and rational view of life and nature. The scientific view has already permeated in a large measure the administrative organizations of the advanced countries. The scientific revolution, the social revolution and the industrial revolution are three aspects of the modernization of every society; these three aspects may be distinguished but cannot be separated. The rate of economic growth in every country is determined both directly and indirectly by the rate of progress of science and technology; directly through the utilization of the results of research and development, and indirectly through institutional changes brought about by the increasing influence of the scientific out-look and tradition.

[He} was one of Tagore's rare friends who did not place him simply on a high pedestal full of only aura and fame, but treated him as a lively intellectual and affectionate companion.

I need hardly say that I refer to the emergence of a statistically competent technique of Sample Survey, with which I believe Professor Mahalanobis name will always be associated.

Population in India is widely differentiated in ethnic composition, geographical and climatic conditions, social and cultural stratification, as well as by differences in economic status. Differential fertility therefore assumes a far more complex picture in India than anywhere in the world. Ethnic. geographical. socio-cultural and economic dilferences give a four-fold patterning with many complicated interactions. It is essential therefore to study different population groups separately.

The spirit and outlook of 'Sankhya' will be universal, but its form and content must necessarily be, to some extent, regional. We shall keep the special needs of India in view without, however, restricting the scope of the journal in any way. We shall naturally devote closer attention to the collection and analysis of data relating to India, but we shall try to study all Indian questions in relation to world problems.... The study of modern statistical methods in its infancy in our country, and we do not expect to be able to achieve immediate results. We shall be satisfied if we can help by our humble efforts to lay the foundations for future work.

If Mahalanobis had done nothing else, if he had only founded Sankhya, the Indian Journal of Statistics, even so his contribution to science would have been outstanding and memorable. Sankhya is an international journal in the sense that it receives contributions from statisticians and probabilists the world over; international as in the sense of maintaining a standard comparable to the best in the world. And this has been from the very beginning. This is something that cannot be said of many scientific journals in the country

C.R.Rao quoted in }Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis"

He sometimes spoke of "zero" as the symbol of the absolute (Nirguna Brahman) of the extreme monistic school of Hindu philosophy, that is, the reality to which no qualities can be attributed, which cannot be defined or described by words and which is completely beyond the reach of the human mind. According to Ramanujan the appropriate symbol was the number "zero" which is the absolute negation of all attributes.

It would be, however, a fatal mistake to establish an expensive system of education on the model of the advanced countries which would have little relevance to local needs and would be beyond the means of the national economy. It is necessary to evolve a system, through experimentation and trial and success, which would be within the means of the national economy.